V. I. Lenin

TheVperyodGroup{1}

A Conspectus

Written:Written at the end of December 1909 (the first half of January 1910)Published:First published in 1933 inLenin Miscellany XXV.

      Published according to the manuscript.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1974],

      Moscow,Volume 16,

      pages145-146.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marxists.org)
      © 2004

      Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the
      terms of theGNU Free Documentation License.

Aftera series of lectures to the comrades of theVperyodgroup and after a final conversation with them on Party
tasks and the position of theVperyodgroup in the Party, I find
it necessary to set out in written form my attitude to the questions in
dispute in order to avoid misunderstandings and misinterpretations.

Iconsider that the platform of theVperyodgroup is permeated
through and through by views which are incompatible with Party decisions
(the resolutions of the December Conference in 1908) and are contrary to
those decisions.

TheVperyodplatform takes a wrong view of the present period,
for this view leaves out of account the economic and political changes in
Russia which are finding expression in the autocracy’s new step along the
path to conversion into a bourgeois monarchy. Hencein actual factotzovist tactical conclusions follow from the view adopted by theVperyodplatform.

Consequently,theVperyodplatform is wholly permeated by
views that deny the absolute necessity of the Social-Democratic Party’s
participation in the Third Duma and the absolute necessity of building a
new type of illegal Party organisation surrounded by a network of legal
organisations and necessarily utilising every legal opportunity.

Byputting forward in its platform the task of elaborating a so-called
“proletarian philosophy”, “proletarian culture”, etc., theVperyodgroup in fact comes to the defence of the group of
literati who are putting forward anti-Marxist views in this field.

Bydeclaring otzovism “a legitimate shade of opinion”, the platform
of theVperyodgroup shields and defends otzovism, which is doing
great harm to the Party.

Inview of all this, the personal declarations of the majority of
comrades of theVperyodgroup that they will carry on a sincere
correspondence with the Central Organ, that they will fight against the
otzovists in a principled and comradely way, that they will co-operate
sincerely in utilising legal opportunities, that they will combat all
attempts to disrupt the legal workers’ organisations and
enterprises—these declarations do not inspire confidence and make one
fear that theVperyodgroup will wage a struggle against the Party
line in local work and in the work of preparing for a conference.

Myattitude to, the local functionaries of theVperyodgroup
will depend on their activities in Russia and how they put their
declarations into effect.

{1}TheVperyodgroup—an anti-Party group of otzovists,
ultimatumists, god-builders and empirio-monists (adherents of the
reactionary idealist philosophy of Mach and Avenarius), organised in
December 1909 on the initiative of A. Bogdanov and G. Alexinsky. Its press
organ bore his name. In 1912 the Vperyodists, together with the Menshevik
liquidators, united against the Bolsheviks in a general anti-Party bloc
(the August bloc) organised by Trotsky.

Sinceit did not have the support of the workers, the group virtually
broke up as early as in 1913. Its final and formal disintegration occurred
in 1917 after the February Revolution.